Georges Palante

Georges Toussaint Léon Palante (20 November 1862 – 5 August 1925) was a French philosopher and sociologist.

Palante advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.

Life

Palante was born in Saint-Laurent-Blangy in the Pas-de-Calais on 20 November 1862. His father Emile Palante was an accountant from Liège. Palante's older brother Emile died when he was only five years old. He studied successively at the college of Arras where he excelled in Latin, then at Lycée Louis-le-Grand where he earned his bachelor's degree.

He obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Douai. In 1885, he began his career as professor of philosophy at Aurillac, where he met his future wife Louise Genty, whom he married three years later. The couple had a daughter named Germaine in 1890. Between 1886 and 1888, he studied in Châteauroux. In 1888, he received his agrégation in philosophy.

Palante separated from his first wife in 1890 and was appointed to teach at the Lycée de Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, then in the following years at Valenciennes, La Rochelle and Niort. In 1893, he translated a work by Theobald Ziegler and began to publish articles. He returned in 1898 to the Lycée de Saint-Brieuc, at which he worked for the remainder of his teaching career. Meanwhile, he continued to work on his philosophical ideas, publishing articles and essays in journals. Palante published collections of his articles in various books, notably Combat pour l'individu (Fight for the Individual) in 1904 and La Sensibilité individualiste (The Individualist Sensibility) in 1909.